Longtime Y member takes last lap in pool

BANGOR – Nearly 50 years after swimming the first lap in the then-new John W. Coombs Memorial Swimming Pool, longtime Bangor Y member and former employee Tim Rice swam the last lap.

It happened Saturday afternoon, just before the pool at the Y’s Hammond Street site was closed as part of the organization’s effort to consolidate aquatics programming at the Y’s Second Street location, home to the Aloupis and Means pools.

Rice, who became a member of the Bangor YMCA when he was 6 years old, was the first person to swim a lap in the Coombs pool when construction was completed in 1958.

He learned to swim in the Souadabscook Stream at the YMCA’s Camp Prentiss, now Camp Peirce Webber, in Hampden, and spent many years at the camp, serving as junior counselor, senior counselor, aquatics director and then as camp director for six years.

Rice also worked part-time for the YMCA throughout junior high, high school and college, and eventually served as physical director for six years during Coombs’ tenure as the Y’s executive director.

The pool was dedicated to Coombs for his many years of outstanding leadership and service, including a stint as physical director from 1951 to 1971 and as executive director from 1972 to 1983. Coombs also was a founder and commissioner of the Maine State YMCA League from 1959 to 1983.

Though Reeves estimated that the pool closure would save the Y about $100,000 a year, he said the closure was more about eliminating the duplication of services.

The closure of the Coombs Pool marks the first phase of a three-year strategic plan aimed at making more efficient use of the Y’s resources, which include its facilities on Hammond Street and Second Street, Rob Reeves, the group’s executive director, said earlier.

The two sites are about three blocks apart in downtown Bangor.

Though closed, the Coombs Pool has not been filled in. Instead, the decision was made to build a floor over it, preserving the opportunity to someday reopen it, if needed.

The conversion of the Coombs pool space will allow Bangor Y to centralize aquatics functions at its Second Street facility, home to the Aloupis and Means pools. The Hammond Street site’s focus will be physical fitness.

Now that the Coombs pool has closed, Rice attends his early morning water fitness class at the Aloupis pool, one of two located at Bangor Y’s facility on Second Street.